first four years and enough clean energy to power a quarter million homes. that is what i want us to be thinking about and striving to achieve. i am really excited about what we can do to make sure every young american is prepared. i want to start in the early years of life in early education, universal pregame. i want kids to be prepared to proceed -- compete. we are in a competition. i want us to step up and win. i want kids to have good teachers and good schools in a recent drug. i want to be a good partner -- in every zip code. i want to be a good partner here in new hampshire. [cheers and applause] ms. clinton: i want to bring back technical education to high

school. i think we really shut the door on too many young people who could have gotten skills that would have given them the chance to get ahead. and working with our community colleges, we need to make sure every young person and every person coming back to upgrade or change skills can go to a community college. we are going to make four-year college affordable. just this week, a new report showed that new hampshire students have very high levels of debt. i know maggie has been fighting that. she has had a much -- moratorium. she has worked at the state level. we need to work at the national level to make sure students and families in new hampshire. after our primary was over, and you know what, i was really proud. i was really proud of the campaign that bernie sanders and iran.

it was a campaign -- [applause] ms. clinton: it was a campaign about ideas, not insults. that is what campaigns should be about. after it was over, bernie and i got together and we came up with a plan to make public colleges and universities tuition free for any families making less than $125,000 a year. [cheers and applause] ms. clinton: and if you make more than that, it will be debt free. in other words, pay what you can . let's not have kids and families going into debt to get an education. this should make -- and be an investment we make on behalf of them and our country's future. go, to a where you great school like this, or anywhere else, we will help you pay down your student debt. we will make it easier because

we are to make it as a percentage of your income so you are never on the hook for more than you can afford. if you are interested to see how much you and your family could say, you can go to hillary calculator to see how much you can save under this plan we are proposing. [applause] ms. clinton: i think in addition to growing the economy, we need to do a lot more on small business. two thirds of new jobs will come from small business. we will be focused on how we make it possible to start and grow your small business. we have to make the economy fare are. that starts with raising the national minimum wage. if you work full-time, you should not still be poverty. work should provide a ladder of opportunity for people willing to work for it to climb. right? [applause]

ms. clinton: we are going to guarantee equal pay. we are going to make affordable childcare so nobody pays more than 10% of your income for childcare. we will have paid family leave. this is the way families are today. we are not living in the 1950's. families are under new stresses. meet so manyy -- were just at the edge. they are making all they can, one family -- parent making full-time work and to parents working full-time. tim kaine and i were in pittsburgh. there was a long line of people. a great overflow we could not get into the main room. tim kaine was talking to a woman there holding her three-year-old child. tim kaine was shaking hands, and she said, "i came here hoping i

could tell you were secretary clinton that i had my baby three years ago, and the day after i was fired because i called and asked if i could have a few weeks this it had been a difficult pregnancy, and my baby was fine but not all she needed to be. i got fired." tim kaine came in. he is such a wonderful man. what a fine, fine human being. [applause] ms. clinton: he said to me, there are reasons every day i get so motivated in this election. he told me that story. i think your president should care about that. i think your president should wake up every day thinking, "how do i help empower people to make the most out of their own lives?" not down the barriers.

i have proposed plans that do not add one penny to the debt. i see some of my longtime friends back in the 1992 campaign, and my husband ended up with a balanced budget and a surplus. we were on the way to paying down the national debt. here's what happened. what happened is trouble down economics came back. trickle down economics came back. we are going to ask the wealthy to pay their fair share. we going to close the loopholes. we are going to get rid of the fact that millionaires can pay a lower tax rate than a nurse or teacher or police officer. we will make big banks for the risk they pose to our economy. elizabeth is absolutely right.

no bank is too big to fail. no one should be above the law. we're going to enforce that. contrast that with donald trump. believes if you get trillions of taxpayer's to the wealthy, --lionaires and billionaires of tax cuts to the wealthy, millionaires and billionaires, that will work out. he would eliminate the consumer financial protection bureau that elizabeth did so much to create. [booing] clinton: in the debates we learned he has not paid any income taxes for years. he has not paid a penny to support military, clinton: in te learned he has not veterans, education, health, or anything

else. his explanation was that he lost $1 billion in a year. i have pondered this. i have really pondered this. he actually said it made him smart not to pay income taxes. how smart are you to lose $1 billion in a year? to anybody here ever been casino? he last $1 billion running casinos. who does that? i've never heard anybody. we have got to make it clear that donald is not on the side of american workers or american families. for all of his talk of putting america first, he makes his rights and at least 12 other countries. businesses,mall mom-and-pop contractors who worked for him. my dad was a small business

owner. i am glad he never got a contract from donald trump. it was hard work. people who do that work should be rewarded, not taken advantage of your we know a lot about how donald trump works. today we heard yet another story . it is about a maintenance worker at one of his golf courses. this maintenance worker told his coworkers he was gay. they started harassing him. slurs to hisi-gay face. they threw rocks and golf balls at him. his supervisors saw it and did nothing. it got so bad that he wound up in the hospital. finally, he went to the police for help. he could not go back to work because he was scared for his safety. then he was fired by donald trump's golf club. this is a heart-wrenching story on a lot of levels. for starters, it is a painful

reminder of the harassment, violence, and discrimination too many lgbt americans face every day. it is deeply disturbing that instead of stepping in to stop the tormentors, donald trump's golf club turned on the victim for coming forward. if that is how donald trump runs his business, what does that say about how he would run our country? my friends, there are lots of reasons, so many to take this election seriously. here is what i want you to know. orcourse, i want you to vote all of us. more than that, i want you to vote for yourselves. for your families, for your help, or our future together -- hope, for our future together. if you believe women should be treated with the committee and

respect and should be able to make our own health care decisions and marriage equality should be protected, and we have e substanceth abuse rises, and if you believe we should work with our allies, not insult them, then you have to vote. all of these issues are on the ballot this november. i believe with all of my heart that we will, after this election, get together to help heal the divides that have sprung up and are so painful among us. [cheers and applause] ms. clinton: please register and vote on the same day. go to iwillvote.com to confirm your polling place. .com. hillaryclinton sign up and volunteer.

know to come you out and vote. i think this election is going to turn on who is motivated to vote. we need each and every one of you to do everything you can to make sure it is clear to everybody you know that our future is at stake. if you want to be part of a positive, optimistic, confident, unifying future, these come out and vote on november 8 here in new hampshire and prove once and e.r all that love trumps hat thank you all. [cheers and applause] ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national

cable satellite corp. 2016] ["ain't no mountain high enough" playing] ♪

["freedom!" by pharrell williams playing]

>> staples in new hampshire showing hillary into leading in new hampshire and nationally by five points. we will see tomorrow to the white house coverage today. donald trump will be in florida at 7:00 eastern. -- we wille the 41 have a for you on www.c-span.org . >> on election day, november 8, the nation decides her next resident and which party controls the house and senate. coverage ofspan for the presidential race, including campaign stops with hillary clinton, donald trump and their surrogates. follow key house and senate races with our coverage of their candidate debates and speeches. c-span, where history unfolds daily.

>> coming up, a look at opioid abuse. former house speaker newt , van jones, and pat kennedy will be talking about treatment and overdose prevention. we will have a live at 3:30 eastern here and c-span. then a debate in the pennsylvania u.s. senate race between pat toomey and is democratic challenger, katie kennedy. ♪ vance on his new book, "hillbilly elegy."

chuck: did you have any idea that it would be a huge hit? jd: i did not have a to have quite the response ahead. brian: why do you think at had? jd: i think the weird nature of , it seems to be making waves in the selection in a number of different ways. if you get should a light on the area of the country partially because of the election and partially because people are curious, an area of the country that the did not know a whole lot about your hopefully, i have shown them a little bit about what folks in this region are like, the good and the bad.

brian: where were you born? jd: i was born in middletown, ohio. i spent a lot of time in kentucky. my grandparents, who i grew up with, or appellation di -- were appalacian diaspora. it is a small town. 40% poverty rate. the opioid epidemic has hit this area hard. it hits the coal jobs. it is a tough area to grow up in. middletown was supposed to be the economic savior. in a lot of ways, it was. it provided my grandparents a good wage, but a lot of the problems persisted from jackson. you see a lot of the problems, to thee family breakdown

drug addiction, homelessness, joblessness is common. in ohio, people can still find decent jobs. the poverty and unemployment rate is not quite as high. there are a lot of the social ills in southern ohio that do not look that different from jackson. brian: are there hills in both places? places? jd: yes, but they are bigger in jackson. middletown is in a plateau. if you have ever been to cincinnati, it is very hilly, almost mountainous, but not like kentucky and tennessee. host: what made you leave? brian: what year did you leave that area permanently?

jd: i left in 2003 to join the military. like a lot of kids, i left to joining the terry. i listed in the marines and this was right after we invaded iraq. enlisted in april of 2003. the war was the engine that brought me out of where i grew up. i never lived there for more than a few months at a time. host: what years were you in the marines? jd 2003-2007. : i went to ohio state for a couple of years. i majored in philosophy. i was in yale from 2010-2013. i couldn't start and the next law school term had already started.

this was a chunk of time where i stayed with my aunt and uncle. brian: when did you go to san francisco? jd: 1.5 years ago. brian: what area of law are you in? jd: i am an investor in san francisco and i practiced law in boston. i did a lot of regulatory work in washington, d.c. and i left. for the technology world in san francisco

i ran a company -- san francisco. i ran a company for a time. brian: when did you get married? jd: 2014. brian: any kids? jd: no. brian: has your mother read the book? jd: she has. it is tough. it is not the most flattering. it is the sort of thing that, when i talked about it for the first time, it was a few weeks ago that we really talked about the book and what was in it and the story that it told. it was one of the best conversations i had with my mom in 15 years. it is hard for my mom to recognize the way her life affected me and my sister. but it -- but how it affected her. you think a lot of these things are your fault and i hope i do an ok job of showing that this is a multi-generational context. to try to explain that this is

not all mom's fault. in some ways, this was an inheritance of the family. that was just as hard on her as it was on me. brian: how much did alcohol play a role in your mom's life? jd: her dad was an alcoholic who quit drinking when i was born. it's really weird that i think of him as an almost perfect guy, never having a temper. but he was a mean drunk. it was interesting to compare to the opinion i had. drugs was a big part of mom's life. a big part of our family story. she, like a lot of people, got a taste for prescription narcotics. it dominated our lives and affected our lives in a lot of different ways.

she has gotten it under control and things are going pretty well right now. it is a story that is too common, where drugs move in and mess up the families. brian: what is the story where she tried to commit suicide? jd: she had lost her job. that was when she started using drugs. her marriage was falling apart. we were living in a rural part of the state, as her marriage was falling apart, and we were moving to middletown. she crashed a car into a telephone pole. she went to the hospital. you know, she tried to commit suicide. it was hard for me to hear, as her son.

you always wonder, "what could i will have done differently?" you wonder that as a grown man or as a kid. you always wonder what could make things a little bit better. the never kind of leaves you. brian: how old are you? jd: 32. brian: how old is your mother? jd: 55. brian: who was bob? jd: a stepfather i had. my mother's third husband. he was and is my legal father. when i was five or six years old, my biological father decided he would give me up for adoption for complicated reasons. he and i are close now and we have reconnected. bob became my legal father and i took his name.

i became james david hamill, which you will notice is not my name anymore. like a lot of the men we were exposed to, he did not stick around. he did not become my dad. he was a guy in the picture and he left. brian: who was chip? jd: a boyfriend my mom stayed with for a while and he was a reasonable guy. he was the sort of classic police officer, with a lot of the attitudes that were common. he had some connection to the south, because of his mannerisms and the way he conducted himself. he drank a lot. he wasn't abusive to me.

the real story of a lot of these guys is that they would come in and they would go out. it was not that they were bad guys. they were just not people you can depend upon and that was the lesson we grew up on. you could not really depend on these guys. brian: who was steve? jd: steve came after chip. he was a nice guy. we wanted mom to marry steve, but after a year, he was gone. brian: who was matt? jd: my favorite. he was a good human being, cared a lot about me and my sister. at the worst part of our lives, when mom was in rehab, matt took care of us, checking in on us,

making sure we had food to eat, making sure we want to school, when there was not an adult presence in our life. matt and i kept in contact. we're still pretty close and he is doing well. brian: ken? jd: an interesting story. maybe that isn't the right word. i was living with mom and matt. one day, mom told me she was getting married. i thought she was getting married to matt, but it was ken. he was her boss. i learned she had started a relationship with him and we would be moving in. there had been dating for about a week. i was moved from matt's house. ken, again, was just one of these people who would come into

our lives and go. brian: how many times did your mom get married? jd: five times over the course of her life. brian: is she married? jd: good question. i believe the answer is no. brian: what does she do? jd: she takes care of the elderly. she works in various -- basically a home health nurse. it is good for her. she is clean and she is working hard. brian: who was ma-maw? jd: she was my mother's mother. it is pretty common in these big eastern kentucky families.

her reach was broader than a lot of people and she made sure i had a safe and stable home when my mother could not provided, making sure i had exposure to the life lessons and the people i needed to have exposure to to make sure i did not fall through the cracks. she was gun-toting, had 19 handguns, cussed up a storm. she was a powerful and perceptive figure that made sure that i had the exposure to the things that i needed to ignore to have a good life. brian: pa-paw? jd: her husband. because of his drinking, they were separated, but never got divorced. they just did not believe in that. we went through the revolving door of maternal partners, but he was the one man we could rely

on and the best father anybody could ask for. he played that role in our lives and he would fix up a car, provide us extra spending money, that was his role. he stood in for the father that my sister and i did not have. again, he was this gruff old guy from eastern kentucky. he didn't fit in in ohio. he definitely belonged in eastern kentucky and felt more comfortable there. but he was just a great guy. >> what is mountain dew mouth? jd: a term that people give to the dental problems that happen when you have too much sugary soda. it is not something that people like to talk about and people

are unfairly stereotyped for having terrible teeth. it is true that, among poor families, kids have dental problems because they are given sugary soda before they should be. i was a baby when pepsi was put into my bottle and my grandma said, get that out, it showed that a lot of us didn't know. there were premature dental problems. it's not that the people who put the pepsi in my bottle were bad people, they just did not know. my grandma did. brian: what is a hillbilly? what is an elegy? jd: a hillbilly is somebody who has a connection to appalachia. or if you are south of the ohio.

you either have family or a special kinship to the region. it is a pejorative. if somebody used it outside of the family, i would be offended. we use it as a term of endearment. an elegy is a sad song or poem. all in some ways, this is the sad story of people who have come from appalachia. this is the story of them when they were 15-20 and it has not panned out. their family has a love the of the problems they had hoped they would not have when they escaped from eastern

kentucky. brian: who named the book? jd: a combination of me and my publisher. it is not something i was particularly attached to, at first. elegy is not a word i would use growing up. the more i thought about what it meant, it really is the story of my family, these hillbillies, and the sadness that characterize their lives. brian: you said there was something missing. you are not getting what is in this book because of? there is language that would remove the bark from the tree. [laughter] jd: there is a lot of colorful language and other cuss words. someone once told me that my ma-maw had the mouth of a

sailor, only worse. i don't filter that. i don't try to hide that. that is the way that we spoke and i try to provide an honest picture in the book. brian: what do you think they would think if they read the book? jd: i think they would love the book. i tried to write a book they would be proud of and ma-maw was open about the problems. again and again, she was very perceptive and recognize that people did not like to talk about these problems, thinking that you do not want to open up family history or talk about these problems. she recognized that you had to talk about these problems in order to really understand them and try to fix them. the people who come up to me and say that my ma-maw, pa-paw were heroes, that is what i want to show people.

you need a lot of people to play a heroic role in your life, in order to have a chance. that.ckily i had this is the story of how they impacted my lives. brian: where is your sister? jd: in ohio. brian: married? jd: yes. in our own way, lindsay and i have escaped the statistics that say that we should not be able to live a happy life and have an intact family or a decent and steady job. we have done that in our own ways. brian: no amount of self-control can withstand a --

[laughter] brian: what is that about? jd: family honor and family loyalty are really important, when you grow up like this. you are a poor kid and do not have a lot to hang your hat on. we are told to never let insults to your family or mother go unpunished. it is important to defend the family honor and that you are part of the family story. these insults are mild insults, the sorts of things that, in a corporate boardroom or in a 21st-century marriage, it doesn't make sense to respond to these insults with hot temper, fists or violence. but in a family like mine, you

are taught to do that. brian: you say -- brian: how much or how many others were like that description? jd: not a whole lot fit all of the stereotypical boxes. a thing i try to write about is that a lot of the stereotypes are not totally fair and people are, justifiably, sensitive about "redneck." hopefully, that is not the picture i am painting of my family. so most people are not as

extreme as bob, but i try to point out that a lot of the perceived problems do not exist everywhere, but they are certainly there. the problems exist at a disproportionate level in our society and we have to be honest about it. jd: yeah. the tough thing about these areas is that most of the people who are out of work are trying to get ahead, applying, putting out resumes, talking to friends and family, and you can help to feel -- but to feel bad for them. on the other hand, there are people who are not working and don't seem to care that they are not working. they are not aware of it. the people who are not working extolled the virtues of hard-working, even as they don't

work. the juxtaposition is really tough, right? because you see these people working hard and trying to get ahead in the other people who are not working hard and are not trying to get ahead. in a community like mine, you cannot miss both sides of the coin. brian: my sister and i -- [laughter] jd: that is exactly right. the chicken man is a guy who was in eastern kentucky transplant with chickens in his backyard.

they've laid eggs. he pick up the eggs. when one got old or sick, he would cut it up for me. there are a lot of modern americans who are creating that life and it was looked down upon back then. it is one of the many ways where my parents felt like they were outsiders in this ohio town, as eastern kentucky transplants that many would call "hillbillies." there were also the relatively upper-class ohioans who were not comfortable with the chicken man. brian: how often did you see people hungry? jd: not a lot. definitely did not see a ton of that extreme poverty. a little bit in jackson. people were aware of it.

as a kid, i was not aware of it. i did remember people talking about it. in middletown, people with not that much money were not so destitute that they could not afford food. i never got the sense that they were truly desperate. brian: how many were poor? jd: a big chunk. numberrd to put an exact on it. i would say a quarter of the population was pretty close to the poverty line. they were worried about how they would put clothes on their kid's back and struggling in different ways. brian: you talk about religion. your own beliefs?

jim us some background on all that and how religious is that area? jd: it is very religious, in self-identification. they will say they are evangelical, but people are not going to church, identifying as christian, but not going to bricks and mortar churches. i think that's really important because having access to the church community, which i first got through my dad's church, was important. having that church access for me when i was a teenager was important. it worries me in these areas, since i have reengaged in my religious faith and it worries me that you see people who identify as christian but do not have connection to the church,

because i do not think you are getting the benefits, if you are not engaging in the week to week way. brian: what is the hillbilly highway? jd: it is the broad way to talk about the roads that brought people into indiana, ohio, michigan. it is just a road. it is u.s. route 23, which ran through eastern kentucky to columbus. there were a bunch of people who drive along that highway, moving permanently, in search for a better life or wage. what is interesting is that that was also the way people got home on holidays. you would see people driving from eastern kentucky with license plates from michigan and

ohio. that is the roads these people traveled. brian: what's the distance between jackson, kentucky and middletown, ohio. give us an idea of what it's like. jd: jackson, kentucky is in coal country. as the crows fly, it is 100 miles. in terms of driving, it is 3.5 hours. with the mountain road's, you cannot drive that fast. it is difficult to get a good speed. hilly. it feels further away than it actually is. it is a place where you can make a good weekend trip. it takes a while to get there. brian: how do people game the food stamp system?

jd: there are a couple of ways. one way is that they buy soda and they sell it to their neighbors for a cash discount for they will sell the food stamps directly. lot ofpegal, but a eopl -- of people still do. another thing i saw his people coming in and buying food and soda with food stamps and everything else is on a separate check. there is a recognition that they are not depending on the stamps in the way that was intended and it breeds resentment in your neighbors. they see people who need this and they see the people who take advantage of the system and they get frustration towards those who are gaming the system and they are frustrated with the government, who they feel is not

monitoring the benefits as well as they should. there is an interesting feeling of people who recognize that the assistance is needed, but are upset with those who abuse it. brian: you said you had an epiphany as a young boy? jd: i had many. one of those epiphanies is that i sort of recognized what people in the government was trying to do to help communities like mine, it wasn't going where it was needed. with the welfare system, you would see that people are using the system well and others are not using the system as honestly as they should. brian: you said you hated school and you hated home more.

which home are you talking about? jd: the one with mom, where we felt like we were constantly cycling from boyfriend to boyfriend to husband and it was unstable, chaotic, there was intense fighting and domestic violence in one direction or another and i hated the instability, feeling as though i could never get comfortable and that i was constantly moving. you could come home from school and find out that you were moving from a house that you liked to a house of a stranger. that is what i disliked the most about home. brian: school? why did you hate school? jd: i didn't see the point of it and there was not a clear connection between education and opportunities.

the people who did well in school did not necessarily make a whole lot out of themselves and they were not having good opportunities, so it was hard to believe that school mattered that much. it is hard to go from a home where you are unhappy to a school, where everything is sunshine and rainbows. the unhappiness from home sometimes makes you sick, stressed out, worried about going home, and it colors the way you approach school. brian: you have a degree from ohio state and yale. what do you think? jd: i think they could do more to help poor kids and i do not think it was a problem of mine growing up.

if you think about why i wasn't doing so well in school, it was because there was so much going on and it was tough to focus. i would like to see the focus on recognizing the problem that existed in homes like mine and i'm cognizant of the fact that it is hard to make up for a negative home life and we really tried hard, and a lot of ways. brian: what what was the relationship with ma-maw and your mother? jd: she was not afraid to say that she disagreed with a less stout choice. -- a lifestyle choice. she was not afraid to tell my mother about her decisions.

sometimes she was mom's best friend. but she was not enabling. brian: you have lived in columbus. could you ever go back to hill country? jd: i definitely could. brian: would you? jd: it is hard to imagine going back to a rural place. the opportunities are not there. that is why people, like me, leave. it's not because they'd don't love with a came from. it is still where i feel the most comfortable in the whole world. it is hard to imagine what kind of job i would do. the brain drain is not because we do not like our home anymore, but you have to have higher-skills jobs. brian: someone asked you if you went to yale and you dodged it.

jd: someone asked me and i felt, in that moment, that i would identify as an ivy leaguer, and i decide to be a southern ohio boy and i said that my girlfriend went to yale. the reason i said this is because the upward mobility creates conflict in our mind. i lied to this one because, to tell her the truth, i would have felt like a bit of a class traitor. i don't want to gloss over the fact that, when you go to yale, you become culturally alienated from the home that you grew up in, but i think it is possible, with conscientiousness. brian: one thing -- no photos. why no photos and are there any available? jd: i am working on getting a

website of c some of that characters they are reading about and it is something that did not come up. i wonder why we didn't think to stick some photos and. -- photos in. i definitely regret it, in hindsight, because people identify with ma-maw. but it's definitely something that i am working on. so folks who are fans of the book, please hang in there. i will have photos on a website soon. brian: what is "hillbilly justice?" jd: a sense that there are certain wrongs in the world and a combination of mental edge is vigilantism, that you do

not need the law. sometimes, you should take care of business yourself. my grandmother told me the story of a man who was accused of sexually assaulting a woman and they found him facedown in a river with 16 bullet holes. the paper ran a short story. "man found dead, foul play suspected." she always lasted at this. -- laughed at this. this is what you do, when somebody wrongs your family. you take care of it yourself. it obviously creates certain pressures, but something we are proud of in a lot of ways. brian: your ma-maw came close to killing somebody. jd: somebody was trying to steal the family cow. she went outside and grabbed a rifle, shooting a man. the other man left his comrade and she wanted to finish the guy

off, raising the rifle at point-blank range. the older brother said that the man should face the legal consequences. she felt passionately that it was wrong for the poor to steal from one another, that it was the ultimate moral sin and she was not afraid to take care of this. brian: she was a violent non-drunk and pa-paw was a nonviolent drunk. jd: they both could be violent. my grandma said, if you ever get drunk again, i will kill you. a couple weeks later, he came home drunk and she poured gasoline on him and set him on fire and he escaped with mild

burns. she was not a "take it laying down" sort of type. that probably exacerbated the violence in the home. it is funny, or troubling, depending on your perspective. she said, you got a detail wrong. i was talking with my mom about that story. she said, you got a detail wrong. i thought that i had a mistake in the book. she said, it wasn't gasoline, it was lighter fluid. i said, i'm ok with missing that up. it doesn't change the nature of the story. stuff like that really happened and it was a chaotic place to grow up. brian: you said your sister became very attractive. where did she get that?

do you know? jd: i think a lot of the women in our family are beautiful. my grandma, in her hey-day, she was a stunner. she got it from her mom and dad. she was a beautiful young girl and it goes back to family honor and pride. i am proud of her for not just being a good person, but also being beautiful. brian: how much education do the people in your family have? jd: i am the only person with a four year degree. my uncle, he, i believe,, got a -- i believe, got a four year degree, later in life.

i believe that my mom may have an associates degree. i'm the only person who has a graduate degree. brian: when did you first get the idea to write the book? jd: i was a law student and i was bothered by the question of why there weren't more like me at yale, why there were more more kidsre weren't like me. i wanted to ask and answer that question. brian: would you do about that? you said you wanted to write a book and this is published by harper and is on the bestseller list. jd: it is funny.

it did come together in a serendipitous way. there is an author who wrote famous books and they said that i should publish a book. i said, i will think about it and i wrote it, not thinking about if it we get published. a few months later, i was at law school, she connected me with some friends of hers in the publishing industry and i had a book deal. excuse me. that is how that happened. they made sure i got a book deal and i was able to post the book and publish it well. things have gone pretty well, so far.

brian: that authors sat here and talked about her international book and she was the author of the tiger mom book, which was so successful. you showed up at yale. jd: they were saying i was getting aid for the kids that were not especially wealthy and i would receive the maximum amount, because i was one of the poorer kids and it was one of the first times that being poor paid so well. these universities try to recruit, but it is hard to pierce the expectations. i had no idea it would be so cheap to go. i expected i had to take a $200,000 law school loan. at the end of the day, i probably incurred less debt,

because i came from a family that did not have a lot of money. brian: how many jobs did you have? jd: i had a couple, at one point. i had three jobs at one point. i did not want to incur debt. i wanted to have spending money. i got used to not worrying about money and i liked it. i like not worrying about having a beer with friends. the jobs were rewarding and interesting, it you do not have as much time to spend on sleeping. brian: what was your gpa? jd: 4.0. i did well. i learned the lessons of the marine corps well. i did well and i tried.

i realized that was my shot and i could not mess it up, if i wanted to go to a law school. i studied hard and i did well. brian: 4.0? jd: maybe a 3.95? i don't remember. i remember i got maybe one b the entire time i was there. brian: how did you get into yale? jd: luck and the l-sat score. i did well. maybe they like the marine corps background? i didn't apply to yale or harvard.

brian: to quote you, "i am a hill person." still? jd: yes. i think it is about humility. it's about love and the land and where you came from. and most of all, it's this recognition that the valley of someone is not in the credentials that there have, the job a half, how much money there may, but how the treat the people around them. that's one value of being a help person that hopefully will never let go of. because it is really important and i like to think it has served me very well. brian: what is the story of when you were in the car and you ran away?

jd: i was with my mome and something had happened and she was apologetic, asking me to take a ride with her. she told me she would crash the car and kill us both. obviously, i was scared. i was 11 or 12. i took off my seatbelt and hopped into the back of the car. she pulled over the car and i took the opportunity to bolt. i got to the house and i asked a woman to call the police. about the time they came, my mother had located the house and she was arrested. that was traumatic, to have that experience in the first place, and the worst part was that it invited the state into our lives in a way that was uncomfortable

and that i regretted a great deal. brian: did anybody in your life not like the book? jd: nobody has personally told me they did not like the book. the people from kentucky and ohio recognized this. they thank you for being honest about the problems and it reinforces my beliefs. there is a real hope that we can talk about these problems openly in our community. , in the hopes that we can change traction and hopefully make things a little bit better.

brian: what do you consider to be elite? jd: a cultural disposition, eating at restaurants, vacationing certain places, an element of wealth. there is geography. there are people with good credentials and those who grew up different from where i grew up around. brian: how do you view government? jd: pretty complicated, right? i am a conservative guy, but not the type of guy who thinks we should do away with all government.

i also respect and understand that government activity can harm communities, create negative incentives, and it can also address problems without appreciating the natures of the problems and i would like to see government think harder about how to teach lower income parents how to interact with their children better. that's not something that is talked about a lot because we tends to think about this as economic. i'm suspicious about the government having a role in these problems. brian: have you gone back to your high school to talk about your life? jd: not since the book has come out. i have had some contact with the administrators and i hope to go back. brian: what would you tell somebody who had the same experience you had?

how do you get out? how do you get to ohio state? how do you get to yale law school? jd: you have to recognize that life is unfair and you have to see that unfairness and recognize that, with hard work and support for your family, you can overcome this and i always tell kids who were in circumstances that were different from mine -- that were similar to mine, do not give up on yourself. that is the worst of all possible worlds. how do you get to yale and get a nice job? at the end of the day, work really hard, find mentors who will support you, guide you

through the unfamiliar territories, and you have to be lucky. this is a thing i try to impress upon people. this will not be solved entirely by personal agency. i'm not an "up from your bootstraps" kind of guy. i had a lot of help and i want to get more the help desk more -- i want to get more people to help. brian: how did you meet your wife? jd: i met my wife in law school. she's from california. she is different from me, but i see all the same values that i admire in the hill people in her. it is not the job you have or the school you went to that gives you the values.

it's how you treat people. so i understand her family very well. brian: where is her family from? jd: india. brian: you wrote -- brian: what is the eraser story? jd: i was in iraq and we went to do assistance to a local school. we were giving out school supplies and i gave this eraser and he held that like a trophy,

running back to his family. i was looking at his environment and his life and i realized that he had it a lot worse than i did. when you grow up, like i did, it is easy to believe that the deck is stacked against you and irene realized i was that i am lucky and i should start appreciating some of the things my grandparents did for me, instead of being resentful. brian: when books like this are successful, something triggers it. what was it? jd: donald trump helped. i think this brought recognition that people want to understand this group of voters that is

going for him. brian: who in the media triggered the interest? jd: rod dreher published a kind review and published a long interview on his blog, giving me a chance to articulate the most important lessons from the book, that poverty and inequality are structural, but also cultural. a friend really liked the book and he blogged about. brian: how many printings? jd: 250,000. brian: how many originally? jd: 10,000. brian: when did they know they would have to print again? jd: american conservative made us realize the demand was greater than we thought it was

going to be. it was off to the races from there. brian: any intention of another book? jd: never say never. no intention, but i never intended to write this one. brian: most significant change? jd: i have a lot of strangers who know about me. i am a private person and i do not like telling personal stories and it is awkward to know that so many know so much about me, but the book justifies my willingness to be forthright about my personal history. brian: a lot of people, like you, say they are a private person. how can you say that? and write all of this stuff about your family?

jd: i was uncomfortable and i had to be pushed to be more honest and forthright. brian: who pushed you? jd: my wife, my friends, my publisher. i was pushed and i had to tell the stories. the bargain i struck with myslef is that i think -- myself is that i think the story told is one that needed to be. brian: is jackson all white? jd: not all-white. brian: where does the picture come from? jd: i don't know. it is a stock image. my guess is that it is from carolina.

it's a getty image. brian: thank you for joining us. jd: thank you for having me. ♪ >> c-span brings you more debates this week from key u.s. senate races. -- atvening at seven talk

7:00, the pennsylvania senate debate between past to me and kate mcginty. a debate for the florida senate between republican senator marco rubio and democratic congressman at murphy -- patrick murphy. republican senator kelly ayotte and democratic governor mcgee hassan debate -- maggie hassan debate. follow key debates are house, senate, and governors races on the c-span networks, c-span.org, and on the c-span radio app. on election day, november 8, our nation decides an ex-president and which party this -- which party controls -- our nation decides on our next president, and which party controls the house and senate.

c-span, where history unfolds daily. ms. satel: former house speaker newt gingrich, former cap -- former congressman patrick kennedy and white house advisor van jones will be talking about leading cause of accidental death in the united states -- overdose. the study looks at therapeutic strategies and challenges to managing addiction. [indiscernible]

ms. satel: welcome everyone to aei. i am a resident scholar here. as we know from reading the headlines, on a near daily basis, there is news of the fact that america has one big drug problem. deaths come from heroin and narcotic pills, are now the number one cause of accidental death in this country. what can policy do about this? what can policymakers do about this? that is what we are here to discuss today. , very honored to be joined by very esteemed individuals. i think you know them all, but i will give a brief introduction. first, newt gingrich, former

speaker of the u.s. house of representatives. throughout his political life, he has helped foster a health system that provides better care at lower costs. patrick j kennedy, former representative of the state of rhode island for 16 years in the house of representatives. he took a lead role in legislation that established parity coverage for mental health and addiction problems, and he last year published a struggle," "a common which is part autobiography and part blueprint for reform. and van jones, former adviser for president obama, and went on to do many things, including establishing green core -- dream core, which is dedicated to among other things prison reform. of the times most

100 influence of people. all three of them are founding member of a new group called advocates for opioid recovery. i will be asking them questions about how policy can promote recovery, and afterwards will take questions from viewers online and from you in the audience. with a want to begin little overview of the scope of the opiate problem. as you can see, clearly there has been a fourfold increase in the number of deaths from overdose from narcotics or heroin. is line up with the red

prescription narcotics, and the purple triangles are from heroin. as far as the number of people who are addicted to heroin and pills, it is very hard to get good numbers. the numbers you will read about are about 2.5 million people misusing narcotic pills -- --odin, oxycontin, percocet and about one million people use heroin. that is higher than the numbers you will see from the cbc. as you can imagine, a lot of people are not amenable to the surveys. another important part of the slide is that 80% of the people who are now using our and -- using heroin started with pills, started with painkillers. that wasn't sure the 60's and 70's, but it is true now.

who is that subset of people? these are the people who misused painkillers. there is a subset of folks who go on to use heroin. not everyone who uses painkillers go on to use heroin. among those who misuse it, the risk factor tends to be having a prior history of substance abuse and having a prior history or concurrent history of major depression or other psychological problems or alcohol problems. -- i'm going to go very quickly through this one -- it shows you the kind of medications, opiate painkiller make -- opiate painkiller medications, that have been subscribed for the end of 1996 to 2004. the pink are the oxycodone type medication, the most common being percocet. , mosteen is hydrocodone

known as by good and -- vicodin. interestingly, the red on the bottom is oxycontin. even though it is gone to play a lesser role after it was reformulated and became harder to crush in 2010, the actual amount of oxycontin prescribed is actually modest. the second point of the slide that is quite important is the fact that it is dipping off. doctors are providing -- prescribing fewer pills. hopefully, better training and how to deal with pain, although we are just beginning that kind of reeducation. also, prescription monitoring programs have kicked in. in 2010 at 2011, these pill

mills, the dea crackdown on them heavily. places, especially ohio, even though prescribing is going down, the death rates from overdoses are not, and that is because people are moving on to other drugs and other painkillers. i'm sure you are all familiar with narcan. , itrly that is a godsend truly saves lives. it is an antidote. it is also available by prescription in all states. you can take it up. about half of the states, you can get it without prescription. a large part of the opiate overdoses are due to fentanyl. it is a very powerful drug. it has a perfectly fine use in anesthesiology and pain control.

when it is out there on the street, it is very dangerous. you can see from the relative potency, fentanyl is 100 times as potent as morphine, although most people don't abuse morphine. they have heroin, and they abuse peet vicodin, whare somewhere between morphine a -- and heroin in that slide in terms of potency. fentanyl is 50 times as potent as heroin. that should not even be handled without gloves. there is a new drug called car sentinel which is 1000 times as potent as heroin. that can kill very efficiently. the fda is probably going to increase the dosage of narcan that is being in the absurd in emergency -- teeing administered in emergency situations to compensate. we're not going to get heavy into the medical weeds.

>> can you affect the last slide -- go back to the last slide? made --car fentanyl carfentenil made? ms. satel: it's actually an elephant trek was her. -- tranquilizer. >> is it the potency or the size of it? ms. satel: i think it's just representative. mr. gingrich: such a knockout an elephant, it is 1000 times more than a human. and they're using it for humans? ms. satel: fentanyl is coming from china and mexico. mr. gingrich: are they cheaper than heroin? ms. satel: they are so much more potent.

one can wonder if we somehow managed to suppress heroin availability, will fentanyl just replace it? >> carry on with your uplifting presentation. mr. gingrich: with methamphetamine, it spreads to the can do it in the garage. how hard is it to manufacture these two? ms. satel: it is hard, because it relies on precursors the dea controls very carefully. this is an something you can make at home in a lab. mr. gingrich: that is some relief. i hope all of you have learned something. i guarantee you the three of us just did. ms. satel: when there is an elephant in the room, you know what to do. [laughter] ms. satel: these are the fda medications that are approved. the reason i want to go over them quickly is because this is what we are talking about expanding access to. the one you have heard the most

about these days is buprenorphine. it is in the class of opioid replacement medication. it is a form of an opiate, definitely. it is not as dangerous an overdose, as a medication called methadone. it can be prescribed by doctors, and that is a great advantage. you can go to the doctor like a regular patient, get a prescription, and go to your pharmacy and get it filled. bupren or thing -- norphine can be used in pill form or as an nasal spray. there is an end that form -- an implant form that goes under , and that lasts for

six months. that is a great advantage for people who don't take medications regularly. then there is the good old aroundne, that has been since the 60's. i work in a methadone clinic. it is a great standby, but you have to get it in a clinic. also finally, there is naltrexone. whereas narcan quickly shoves an opiate molecule off the brain altrexone is a blocker. it is sitting on the cell, and if an opiate module comes by, it cannot bind. if you were to get administered an opioid on top of it, it would have no effect. rexone andlled nalt has been around for at least two decades in the united states,

before that in france. the pill is called revia and also called -- also comes as an .jection -- injection some jails in maryland have used that, and it has cut down on how many readmissions they have. they have injected inmates with medication with their permission , and it has worked to keep them drug-free. -- end ofpresentation my presentation. i'm going to ask some questions of these gentlemen, and then we going to have time for questions . let me tell you how these questions are supposed to go. you can ask these questions at any point, although i will not get to them until we are finished, and they appear on this device.

it should all work, and if it doesn't, i will have to use live human beings. as i mentioned, i work in a methadone clinic, and in many ways that is a vantage point from which i will ask most of these questions. newt -- may iith call you newt? you established opiate recovery in june. how did you come together? it is anich: interesting story about how you can be bipartisan if you allow your interest in solutions, and patrick and i started back in 99, 2000think it is period -- we were very much into electronic health records. i remember the best single press

conference we did, he and tim murphy were hosting a press conference and invited hillary to come. came to seess hillary and made just for the spectacle. it was a great event. we were working on those things. since he was in congress, he's really taken a national leadership role in brain science and organizing conferences, added lighted me to speak -- and invited me to speak. there's a natural pattern there. at the same time, vana died each other at cnn and we were doing i werere -- van and doing crossfire. we were really coming down the road. criminal justice reform in many ways overlaps with mental health and with addiction, because with

the collapse of the mental hospital, the state hospital systems, etc., we often have of the- we may have 40% inmates were appropriately dealt with as mental health problems rather than as criminal problem. in a most any case you have a substantial number of inmates who have an addiction challenge. if you're going to get them back out into society, you have to have a strategy that deals with their addiction, otherwise you are simply putting them back on the streets. it,three of us talked about and the place that -- in a society this complex, if you're going to get attention for a general direction, you have to find something like this current in which people feel compelled with a sense of urgency. we have a general broad interest

in mental health parity, i would describe it frankly as inclusion, the idea that your brain is part of your body, and that any health program that says here's your body, here is your brain is by definition wrong. that is a general thing we believe in. you will not get much coverage talking about that in general. the tragedy of the addiction rates and the number of people dying from overdose involving places -- a number of in new hampshire, for example, it is the number one issue politically. it beats the economy, it beats terrorism. people are really frightened, because they're seeing their children die, or they are saying their brother or sister die. we decided -- and there is a second part of this intersection -- one is to say here is a problem. the thing that tries a crazy, is

we have pretty solid evidence, and you may want to dive into it at some point since you are the technical expert appear, but we have pretty solid evidence that medication assisted recovery combined with cognitive retraining has a very high likelihood of succeeding. but it doesn't fit much of the medical professions tradition, and it doesn't fit many of the medical and state bureaucracies. you're at this moment in time where you're losing 47,000 people. you probably in theory could cut ift by 45,000 lives a year you had the right kind of sophisticated approach to this whole thing. how many times in your life can you find an issue where you might potentially affect half a million people over a 10 or 12 year. why we are talking about it, it attracts a level of attention that no one of us

would get on our own. ms. satel: that was one of my next questions -- what can you do that other and boxy groups can't? was what aretion some of the agenda items? mr. jones: it is really good to see this many people coming out. we live in washington, d.c., we deal with issues all the time. graph, when you saw that the depths -- the deaths, that is shocking. those are just little numbers. those are thousands and thousands of people who have died.

that's thousands and thousands of funerals, that parents with children. there is some external enemy that has figured out to kill this many americans a year, we wouldn't be able to have a room even the side. we would have a stadium full of people trying to figure out. so part of the reason i am here is because i have some i was very close to died, and i did not see it coming at all. i didn't see the signs of the signals. i carry a lot of guilt about what else i could have done. newtly, i know you -- well, and knew he was collaborating, so i got myself added to the band. happily sell. -- happily so. unnecessary.etely

it turns out that there are two strategies that could get this number way down. it is true people have to change their minds. they have to have some willpower . they also, because of the way opioids work, have to change their brains back. this is biological. your brain is an organ, and once -- a. hans you these pills pills,hands you these this is about willpower, this is your bad person, you have organ damage. this is what the dr. gave you. stigma and all of the theology and all the ideology that says this is addiction,

suddenly we turn our brains off and don't look at evidence and don't look at facts and don't people.-- doctors help this can be changed. this organization that we are a part of, we want go on the country and have meetings like this and create a situation doctors stopf all, overprescribing these opioids. if the doctor gives you something and you take it and your life falls apart, that is a bad sign. if you can't trust what a doctor hands you, that is bad. we went for the insurance companies to pay for and give the medicines that correct this. we also want for the government to speed up these approvals, because there are a lot more drugs in the pipeline that could make a big difference. lastly, we have the drug courts out there that have been doing a good job, but could be doing a better job.

, a year ago, ily was not thinking about this at all. it was not my radar screen at all. i did not think about addiction in any way except don't do drugs, and if you do drugs, get off of drugs. that was pretty straightforward in my view. my world got turned upside down like a lot of other people's. there's a lot more out there, and if we work together, we can do something about it. ms. satel: patrick, i know your group commissioned a study on medicaid. could you highlight some of the findings? mr. kennedy: thank you. i appreciate this opportunity with good friends i greatly admire, and it is so impactful to hear speaker gingrich talk about how this needs to be treated like any other illness. it is so powerful wind van jones talks about how you can think one thing one year and then have a totally different perspective after this is personally

affected you. is we just want addiction treated like the disease that it is. that is the endgame. there are lots of things we can do today to help make that a reality so there aren't as many people dying of overdose every year who are dying simply because of our neglect. it is taking time today to put in regulations. people are dying every day. literally today, fda is sitting on the release of medication that can also augment what is available out there for people with opiate addiction people are dying every 90 minutes. this is about a sense of urgency. it is about the fact that as van said, if this were any other illness, they would be marching on washington right now and

people would be throwing up their arms and sang what are you doing about this? instead, we get a bill passed and no funding. there are regulations on evelyn tatian that are not coming. implementation that are not forthcoming. we do not require insurance companies to disclose their medical management practices, which is the insidious way where they deny access to treatment for mental illness and addiction. so this is not about not knowing what to do. you've got it. you could bury yourself in position papers, there are so many good ideas. it is about political will. the reason we don't have political will is that we in our own lives are so ashamed of having these illnesses in our own personal lives or in our

families lives that we do not talk about. guess what? if we can't talk about it in our own lives, how do we expect the government to talk about it for us? issue, thereother are advocates -- there aren't advocates. very rarely do you have someone put their hand and say they are an opioid addict in recovery. it is an important issue to me and i'm going to vote on it, and i'm going to advocate for it. i am so excited having worked in this for some time, seeing the beginning of the advocacy part of this change, and being able to work with very public influence thought leaders like van and newt is a real honor for me. of gingrich: we did a study medicaid variation, which is amazing. it runs from four dollars in

mississippi to $68 in vermont, to give you a range. there are very wide ranges in how easy it is to get access, wide ranges and what they will pay for. almost no correlation of anybody stopping to say what is the outcome of that? this is a field -- i helped found a center for transmission is ago -- it is us dodging for me that one of the greatest problems that we have as we get involved in budgeting cycles that don't have any kind of accumulation. you walk in and say "we have a medication program that also has combined with it training so that people are both training their brain and it the same time they are reorganizing their brain medically." dollars.s x number of